April 18, 2013

Actually the wish for violent criminals to turn out to be right-wingers is very common on the left and in the media (but we repeat). Just today Slate.com had to walk back its previous, ideologically fueled speculation about a murder case by running a piece with the headline: “Suspect in Texas Prosecutor Killings Has Nothing to Do With the Aryan Brotherhood.” And while it’s hard to work up much sympathy for the Aryans, the mainstream left targets mainstream conservatives with similar smears. Remember how the New York Times tried to blame the Tucson massacre, and ABC News the Aurora one, on the Tea Party?

Unlike the Aryan Brotherhood and similar groups, the Tea Party has nothing to do with race. Likewise the antiabortion movement, including its violent fringe. So why are attacks from the likes of Sirota and Wise, as well as from more mainstream media figures, so often framed in racial terms–and by people who are themselves white? . . .

To be white in America is to have the privilege of being able to define one’s political identity in terms of one’s own superiority, whether real or imagined, over other members of one’s own race.

So it’s just white people trying to feel superior to other white people?